OSCAR WILDE (1960)

Gay martyr or vanity’s victim?  Immoral saint or willful society masochist?  Every generation finds the Oscar Wilde it wants.  On screen, 1960 brought two: PLAIN - b&w/small budget, with epicene Robert Morley; and FANCY - TechniColor/WideScreen, dashing Peter Finch.  Yet both men playing the 1960-approved version, paradigmatic playwright of paradox, hoist on his own petard after a case of libel backfires on him (and the unworthy object of his affection) when he treats the courtroom as a stage.  Here, it’s advantage Morley, in spite of a cramped look and a stumbling start next to its more polished rival, Finch in THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE.  Once it sets up the family & professional situation, and once Wilde’s relationship with young shit Lord Alfred takes on a scandalous tinge, Gregory Ratoff’s mere competence as director comes into its own on the crucial trial scenes where his laissez-faire approach allows legal argument & questioning by Alexander Knox, Robert Morley and especially Sir Ralph Richardson to play out with electrifying directness & simplicity.  An acting tour de force trio surpassing anything else done on Wilde, and making the film’s inadequacies all but irrelevant.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Having Jude Law (circa 1997) as Lord Alfred in Stephen Frye’s well-received WILDE makes sense of the infatuation . . . which misses the point.  While Frye’s avuncular Uncle Oscar scrubs off too many sharp edges.  Perhaps Wilde was best captured as fictional self-portrait by George Sanders in the old M-G-M version of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY/’45.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: In a paradox that would have delighted Wilde, the best film adaptation of his work is a silent movie, Ernst Lubitsch’s LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN/’25.  Close second, Alexander’s Korda’s perfectly cast version of AN IDEAL HUSBAND/’47.  (As this is being written, four Wilde projects currently in development.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/10/lady-windermeres-fan-1925.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/an-ideal-husband-1947.html